Tag Archives: safe

Luke Wright is a character in the movie Safe, which stars Jason Statham. Luke is a cage fighter who was previously a policeman in New York and as with many of Statham’s previous roles, it couldn’t be more macho. Lawrence Bender is producing the movie and he has previously won acclaim for working on several of Quentin Tarantino’s films. The movie is just as violent as you might expect and there is plenty of shooting involved.

You could describe the movie is a story about Luke’s redemption, but in reality the film is nothing more than a big shoot em up. It is very similar to other shoot em up movies that have involved Statham and it really brings nothing new to the movie.

All in one film Luke manages to take on the Russian Mafia, the triads, shady politicians and corrupt cops. Despite the overwhelming odds against him, Luke manages to fight through the bad guys and come out victorious. The entire plot borders on the ridiculous and audience members will be laughing at its absurdity as it progresses. All of that said, this doesn’t mean that it isn’t an entertaining yarn and despite its moments of stupidity it is quite a blast.

The central story of the film also involves a 12-year-old girl who is a child genius. She has been abducted by the triads in order to memorise all of their information so that they do not have to store it on a computer which could potentially incriminate them.

Once the child has been given information that she has to memorise, she is kidnapped by the Russian Mafia in a scene which is immensely violent. The kidnapping is botched and she manages to escape but is still being pursued by both the triads and the Russians. As you might expect next she comes across our hero, Luke, and he decides to protect her.

By some wild coincidence that you would certainly expect in this sort of film, Luke also has old business with the Russians. They have been working to make his life miserable after he did not throw a fight in order for them to make a lot of money. He has become immensely downtrodden by the Mafia and he sees this as an opportunity for him to get revenge on them in a spectacularly violent way, all in the guise of it being done for the girl.

The first scene when we see Statham in action is on the subway, when he first comes into contact with the girl. The fighting choreography is immense and he manages to eliminate all the gangsters who have come after him in record time.

As usual his tough guy persona and moody silence is present and other than beating the hell out of people, he mostly frowns. There are some memorable one-liners in the movie and these make it in many ways quite fun, at least in the short term. It is formulaic and has endless action scenes, but it is pretty enjoyable.